The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group works to help people whose rights have been violated and investigates cases involving such abuse, as well as assessing the overall human rights situation in Ukraine. The Group also seeks to develop awareness of human rights issues through public events and its various publications

Regions Party Deputies again lead the truant ranks

As of 6 April the Verkhovna Rada’s official website will be publishing the results of the written registration of National Deputies. The information regarding deputy attendance at the session on 5 April was posted on Wednesday, and will be updated on a daily basis.

This information was reported by the Press Service of the Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Mykola Tomenko. He called on Deputies who are “too busy with business or domestic affairs” to resign.

On Tuesday 78 Deputies were absent, among them 45 members of the Party of the Regions and 14 members of BYuT.

17 Deputies, without a good reason, missed ALL plenary sessions of parliament during the seventh session from September 2010 to January 2011. These included the richest man in Ukraine, Renat Akhmetov, who is also a Party of the Regions Deputy.

It should be stressed that a Deputy’s absence in Ukraine’s parliament makes absolutely no impact on the outcome of any votes since, in breach of the Constitution and Regulations, Deputies press the voting button for their truant colleagues.

Tomenko reports that Deputies from BYuT gave preliminary approval to the proposal for the opposition to join in demonstrating that deputies should be physically present and vote for themselves.

The Speaker of Parliament, Volodymyr Lytvyn (whose bloc is part of the ruling majority with the Party of the Regions and Communists) has previously called on the Verkhovna Rada Office to not pay Deputies who fail to attend parliamentary sessions. There would seem to be no evidence of this happening, but in any case the hardened truants are often extremely wealthy, and unlikely to be perturbed by this.